Our own Chuck Gibson, volunteer producer for OC Talk Radio’s “Open Mic” program, has picked up another endorsement in his campaign to serve on the Santa Margarita Water District Board.

Chuck has not only won the endorsement of the outgoing President of the Board, Bill Lawson, but also was endorsed today by The South Orange County Regional Chamber of Commerce Political Action Committee. Gibson is among a select few candidates the group has endorsed that exemplify its ideals, which include:

Greater investment in our region’s Infrastructure; this includes strong advocacy for a comprehensive solution to our region’s significant transportation challenges and ensuring a reliable supply of energy and water resources;

Enhanced Workforce Development opportunities to prepare the next generation of skilled workers for the challenges of tomorrow.

The Chamber and its Economic Coalition will launch and fund specific initiatives that support one or more of the above advocacy goals. It will educate and mobilize not just business leaders, owners and their employees but a broad spectrum of community leaders who understand the importance of these issues to future economic and job growth.

We heartily join this list of community leaders in endosing Chuck and urge all our South Orange County listeners to vote for him in the upcoming election. To learn more about his expertise on the subject, listen to our past episodes of OPEN MIC where he investigates and reports on the controversial Cadiz Water project.

Tamra Barney, from Bravo’s top rated show The Real Housewives of Orange County will appear today on Jim Schmitt’s OPEN MIC from 2pm-3pm PST. Call in at 949-713-6443 or join the conversation thru our Community Chat Line.

Found a fascinating article by Paul Gillin in this month’s isssue of BtoB Magazine which really puts the whole “social media” problem in perspective. Too many people still see all “social mediums” (like our Internet Talk Radio shows) as a giant billboard on the Internet Super Highway which will drive sales instead of seeing social media for what it truly is: the most powerful form of customer communication ever invented. It fits into the BEGINNING of the sales cycle as a “conversation starter” and not at the end as a “closer”. And that’s the confusion. Here’s the article for you to consider:

“I recently surveyed 55 marketers, including many at b-to-b companies, about their satisfaction with social media tools. While the results aren’t statistically valid, they yield some interesting insight on how the media landscape has changed.

Respondents said that in 2006 their companies were using an average of less than one social media platform each. By last year, the average had swelled to more than eight. Equally interesting were the satisfaction ratings. Just two of the 55 respondents said they perceived the ROI on their social media investments to be negative, while 46 rated it somewhat or very positive.

There’s both good and bad news in these trends. Businesses have clearly turned the corner in their adoption of social platforms, but the rush to join the party indicates that they may be reverting to the mass-market mentality that social marketing explicitly rejects.

The mindset of mass has been ingrained in the marketing conscience for a century. In a world in which the only efficient way to relay a message to a small number of people who cared was to bother a large number of others who didn’t, big media was the only game in town.

Online media have flipped this equation. Success is now defined by the ability to establish meaningful conversations about very specific topics. Quality displaces quantity, and relationships replace messages.

A lot of marketers are having a hard time grasping this because they spent so many years doing the opposite. They see new channels as a way to build another mass audience for the same old messages. They wear their Twitter follower count as a badge of honor. They miss the point.

Social media are called social for a reason. They are a means to create relationships between individuals. Human resources professionals at Sodexo Worldwide have learned this. The big food service and facilities management company has all but discarded job boards in favor of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and a variety of conversational tools. The reason: They found that initiating conversations with applicants before moving them into the recruitment funnel improved both recruiter efficiency and candidate enthusiasm. Along the way, the volume of applications jumped 25% in two years, while recruitment ad spending dropped $300,000.

The new challenge for b-to-b marketers will be to exploit the potential of social media to create connections between all their employees and all their constituents. This will present enormous governance issues as we begin to “media-train” entire companies instead of just a few individuals. That’s a topic for future columns. For now, the challenge is to discard the old economics of mass and embrace the value of one-to-one.”